In recent years the number of domains has grown significantly. Some estimates put the total number of top level domains worldwide, as of March, 2006 at more than 65 million. A domain is a name, such as “www.company.com”, by which a computer connected to the Internet is identified. In this example, “www” indicates the domain is a World Wide Web address, “company” is the name of the company to which the domain is registered, and “.com” indicates that the domain belongs to the “.com” group of commercial domains. Other extensions besides “.com” include “.org”, “.edu”, “.info” and so on. More recently, 700 new domain extensions have been announced to be available in the near future.
Domain names are the human readable analog to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, such as “256.112.10.1”. To be usable, a domain must be registered with one of the numerous accredited domain name registrars, such a “Godaddy.com” or “Register.com”. A user desiring to use a particular domain name typically goes to the web site of one of these registrars, finds a desired available domain name and purchases the domain name. The user then owns the rights to that domain name for a particular period of time, typically, one, two, five, or ten years; the domain registrar lists the domain with the domain authority for the particular domain group. The domain may then be maintained by the user via the web based interface of the registrar with whom which the domain was registered. Some domain name owners register hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of domains in the hope that they will be able to make money from the domains by placing advertising on them, or by selling the domains in the future.
Alternatively, a prospective domain name owner may purchase the rights to a domain name on an after-market, auction, or domain selling site, such as “Afternic.com”, “Snapnames.com”, or “Pool.com”, obtaining the rights to the domain from another owner. When a purchase occurs, the rights to the domain transfer to the new owner in exchange for money, while the domain registration and record itself remains with the domain registrar where the domain was registered.
As a result, the owners of domains often end up with tens or hundreds of domains registered with different registrars. Because domains typically expire on the one year, two year, five year, or ten year anniversary of their registration date, the owner of numerous domains must deal with the numerous different interfaces and accounts of the registration management systems of different registrars. Working with these interfaces can be cumbersome and difficult, while trying to manage domains across multiple registrars can lead to confusion, resulting in a failure to renew a domain before it expires, causing the loss of one or more valuable domain names. The solution to the aforementioned problem is the subject of the present invention.
Many owners of domains host their domains, that is, put the web pages for the web sites that their domain names point to, on servers at a remote location connected to the Internet. “Godaddy.com” is an example of one company that provides both registration services and hosting; Dreamhost is another company that provides hosting services. Hosted servers are typically managed by a company, with a user paying a monthly or yearly fee to the company that owns the servers in exchange for access to the server for a particular period of time, such as a month or a year. The hosting company typically sets up and maintains the server, and often provides additional services such as installing special software, checking for security holes, and updating software, for an additional fee. Thus, in the aforementioned example, a user with multiple web sites may have a web site located on a plurality of Godaddy.com hosted servers, as well as on a plurality of Dreamhost hosted servers, as well as on the servers of other hosting companies.
From time to time, a purchaser of such hosting services desires to migrate web sites from one machine to another. There are a number of cases in which such a purchaser would want to migrate web sites from one machine to another. One case is when a machine on which web sites are running becomes out of date. Another case is when a machine for which a purchaser has paid for a particular period of time, such as a year, comes up for renewal. In this case, the hosting provider often charges more for a renewal of the existing machine than for the purchase of a new machine (often with newer and better hardware), because the hosting provider knows that it is difficult for the purchaser to switch machines. The present invention also solves the aforementioned problem.